


feet on the ground

by beanarie



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amputation, Cancer, Canon Disabled Character, Established Relationship, M/M, Major Illness, au - london criminals, background miranda/richard guthrie, thomas is dead (at least as far as everybody knows)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 12:49:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14402472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/pseuds/beanarie
Summary: On a different day, Flint would say Silver doesn't have a shining best.





	feet on the ground

The appearance of Silver's phone is absolutely the last straw. Flint barely holds back a groan, but he can't stop his fingers digging into the armrests of his chair.

_I love you, but I swear to God if you don't put that phone away I will rip it out of your hands and shove it down your throat._

Gates, the head of surgery, who is meeting with Silver as a favor to Flint, narrows his eyes minutely. "Keeping you from something, am I?"

Silver's bland expression doesn't look smug, exactly, but it isn't ashamed, either. "Queuing up my second opinion," he says. 

Flint starts planning the movements necessary to make an actual grab, but before he can, Silver is up, out of his chair with a slight bounce to accommodate the boot stabilizing his broken ankle. "I'll just give them a ring. Be right back."

There isn't much that surprises Flint, and in fact this shouldn't. Yet he stares at the empty chair as though this moment only happened in his imagination and reality will catch up in just a second.

Gates scratches his beard and cocks his head. "You know him better than I. Is he coming back?"

"Shit."

Silver has been a right prick this entire process, asking facetious questions of all the doctors, denying symptoms and making James speak up for him. He offered life advice to a receptionist. He made eyes at a woman in the radiology waiting room and asked if she wanted a drink later. He fucking knows he lost a couple stone. His leg had been bothering him for weeks before he tripped on the stairs and ended up in hospital. What is he playing at now?

Quick checks of the waiting room, the hall, and the toilet prove fruitless. In the parking garage, in front of his empty car, he finds the phone. The screen is cracked, not shattered, like it wasn't thrown in fury but dropped from nerveless fingers.

He walks around to the driver's side, and allows the phone to fall to the ground a second time.

All this time, he has taken on the burden of terror for both of them, resentfully waiting for Silver to take his share, wanting to scream.

_Fucking show some kind of emotion about this. Are you not scared?_

_Are you NOT SCARED?_

Today, when Flint started to breathe again (after all, what is a leg compared to a life?), Silver finally answered yes.

Well.

Silver sits with his back against the car, staring out at the legs stretched into the next parking space. He doesn't lift his head or acknowledge Flint's presence in any way. Flint sits next to him and wraps his fingers around Silver's wrist. The muscles in his forearm tense up slightly. That's the only reaction he gives. But it's all right; they'll sit here until Silver can move again.

*

"I don't know how much experience you have dealing with people coming out of anesthesia," the nurse says, something of a warning in her voice.

"Not much," Flint offers dimly. He attempts to tune out the occupants of the rooms they pass by. Here a woman and child locked in an embrace crying, there an old man moaning in pain. 

She smiles warmly as they come to a stop. "It can be a bit, uh, dramatic. Just be prepared. He won't be at his shining best." On a different day, Flint would say Silver doesn't have a shining best. 

He stands there staring from the doorway, frozen until he sees Silver has already begun to stir. That propels him forward and into the bedside chair. "Hey," he says softly.

Silver opens his eyes long enough to see Flint and closes them again. He frowns muzzily. "They took my leg?"

"Yeah." He laces their fingers together, mindful of all the tubes. "I-"

"Go get it."

Flint blinks.

"Get my leg. Tell 'em, tell 'em..." He clears his throat loudly, with intent. When he speaks next his voice has deepened half an octave. "Give it."

"Is that what I sound like to you, like Dirty Harry after a tray of shots?"

Silver grunts and flails about to exert the tiniest bit of pressure on Flint's arm with his fingertips. It takes a second to sink in that Silver is pushing him. "Just, just..."

"Listen." Flint inches his chair forward so he can lean in and rub Silver's scalp the way he likes. "You're not getting the leg back. It was riddled with cancer."

Silver hums and makes this weird motion with his eyebrows because he hasn't regained enough faculties to roll his eyes. "I know that, Fucko. I don't want it _on_ me."

"Explain." His hand in Silver's hair stills just after he gets a reply. "Sorry. Say that again?"

"Taxidermy."

Yes, that is what he thought Silver said. "You would put this bit of nightmare fuel, this abomination, where exactly."

His plan not having gone that far, he sighs deeply, frowning again, and it is endearing past the point of endurance. Flint can't restrain himself any longer. He plants a long kiss on that furrowed brow. Unexpectedly, the python in his stomach begins to uncoil. They'll be okay. They'll be fine.

*

"Sir? Sir, we need the room."

It started with a cough that barely interrupted their mostly one-sided discussion about the drugs the hospital is not allowed to dispense though Silver thinks they should be. Quickly it escalated to hacking and wheezing and Silver bearing down on his arm like a vise. Staff started to fly in as blood began to appear on Silver's lips.

"Sir, please! We'll let you know as soon as you can come back, I promise."

Turning for one last look is a mistake. Silver's eyes are desperate, pleading. They sear a hole right through him.

It's a miracle he doesn't fucking break something out in the hallway. While he stands there, shaking, he reminds himself to breathe and tries to quiet the pounding in his ears so he can interpret the sounds coming from that room.

The specter of death that has always followed Flint has been hovering over Silver since this all started, but the assumption had been it would come for him one of two ways--drifting off during a procedure and simply never coming back, or skeletal, insensate, and exhausted after several rounds of failed treatment. He was not supposed to die awake and terrified while Flint was stuck behind glass three feet away.

"They kicked you out?" a familiar voice says from behind. "I wonder what you could have possibly done to deserve that."

Flint and Max do not get on for reasons of which he has long been aware. She's the only person in Silver's life from before Flint. That should mean something, yet their relationship consists solely of running scams together and sleeping with each other's lovers, ex or otherwise. By all appearances, they are the same breed of snake, but while Silver has allowed Flint to see what lies beneath his scales, Max remains an unknown quantity.

Max takes one look at Flint's face and pulls him into her arms. The act is so quick and unexpected he doesn't have the chance to consider protesting.

*

A nurse comes out to meet them at the critical care waiting room. The slight, blond young woman looks incongruously embarrassed. "He is stable and settled in, but I am so sorry. No visitors today."

"This did not come from the doctors, did it," Flint says. 

Her lips pressed together in distress, she shakes her head then looks to Max. "You can come back tomorrow."

He hates that he has to ask. "And me?"

"I've been asked to pass on a message. Again, I'm sorry." She turns her face slightly, avoiding their eyes. "The message is: I love you. Fuck off."

Max pulls at his sleeve. "There is a bottle of aged Irish whiskey at my home. I am in need of someone to race me to the bottom."

They have one rule. If he talks about Silver, he has to take a drink. 

"I am held to this as well, in case you were feeling singled out."

(He asked Silver once if her accent was real. The response was a quick grin accompanied by _What makes you so certain mine is?_ )

She then takes three long swigs from the bottle and tells a story Flint has never heard.

*

Morning. There is carpet under his cheek, a duvet at his back, and he is reasonably certain he cried in front of Max and her silent ginger girlfriend. Rolling over elicits a groan that sounds like his granddad. 

"Well, listen to the dulcet tones of this ray of bloody sunshine."

Eleanor smirks at him from above, looking like she is enjoying the change in perspective. "I'm your ride," she announces. "Keys?"

"Why?"

"Are you or are you not still fucking drunk?" There is nothing to say to that. She rolls her eyes and points to the toilet. "Go get pretty. Clock is ticking."

It would not have surprised him if Max did not come out at all, but the bedroom door opens as he is putting on his left shoe and she emerges, wearing an expensive silk robe and under-eye circles impressive enough to lighten his mood a tiny amount. Everything may be shit, but he's not the only one feeling the effects--of the whiskey, if nothing else. 

She touches his face in farewell. "He is lucky to have you. Take heart that he knows this."

*

Flint stares out at the gates of Hyde Park from the passenger side of his own car. "This has never been my home."

"Oh, I'm aware." She tips her head, indicating the shopping bag sitting unobtrusively between them. "When's the last time you went for a run?"

Flint opens the bag and squints painfully at a pair of tracksuit bottoms. "I'd prefer you drive me to the North bank of the Thames, shoot me in the head, and dump my body in the river."

"Did Dufresne shoot you in the head before he had you tossed in the water?" she asks mildly. "I thought it was a shoulder or something."

He vomits only two, two and half times. She does not stop when he does. Instead she keeps going with the expectation that he would catch up. He has missed Eleanor quite a lot. It's been a while since he's had anything to fence.

Eventually she proclaims that he has had enough, then clears her throat pointedly as he turns toward the car. 

"Is that not where we left the-" Miranda waves from a table outside a cafe. "Oh."

As she hands Eleanor a set of keys and Eleanor drops his on the table, he feels a distinct kinship with the baton in a relay race.

He sits and Eleanor bends down to put her arms around him. "Stop being such a fucking stranger, okay?" He blinks and nods, still feeling the softness of her skin against his cheek even after she's pulled away.

Miranda sips her tea and pushes her water glass in his direction. He has already emptied his own. "We don't have to talk, if you don't want to. I just wanted to make sure you've eaten at least one meal this week." A basket of bread is placed on the table. She smiles as he tears into it. "Nor am I opposed to a sad shag. We've elevated that to rather an art form over the years, have we not?"

He pats her hand. "Thanks. Lunch will do. Maybe tea?"

The twinkle in her eye is familiar and long-missed, though he was never the one who put it there. How could two people love each other so much and be so ill-suited as partners?

He drives her to her flat in Kensington. She holds on almost as tightly as he holds her.

She strokes his hair and clutches at him. "I'm just so sorry that you have to deal with this again."

Gorge rising, he closes his eyes until he no longer wants to physically shove her off of him. Some of his drunken ramblings last night may have been about Thomas. He is not looking forward to Max or Anne confirming that and hopefully neither of them ever will. "It's not the same. I'm fine."

A set of blinds in the front window is pulled back as Richard Guthrie peers out at them. Flint curls his lip and flashes his brights until Guthrie pisses off. He can acknowledge the vermin-faced fuck makes her happy, but _he_ doesn't have to be happy about that.

"Don't be a fucking stranger," she whispers urgently.

Were he a better man, he'd keep this pledge to himself to let her be. However, he is only what he is, and he knows the promise is as empty as the bed waiting for him at home.

*

Silver has somehow lost enough weight that Flint can mark its absence in the sharpness of his jawline, the defined bumps of his knuckles, the harsh jut of his cheekbones. Yet a few days ago, he was barely sitting up on his own. That's some type of progress. 

It could also be simply that they're reducing his pain meds.

The internal calculus must show on his face. Silver raises his eyebrows. "There was a time in my not-too distant past when I had two legs and no sutures in my chest, but I feel I'm doing swimmingly, considering."

Flint bites his tongue. Silver's flat expression says his efforts are not quite enough, but before the tension can grow to an unbearable level, Silver points him to the chair.

"I heard about a job."

This obviously came from Max. Flint tries not to be too much of a shit about this, but he won't just sit and roll over. "Rackham can't handle it on his own?"

"There are complications. It's-"

"Is this some sort of distraction to keep me occupied?"

Silver doesn't move, but something within him shifts. "I'm sorry. Are you under the impression I've volunteered your services only?"

"Oh." After a flash of shame for his stupidity, all he can feel is a relief so profound he wants to thank someone.

"They didn't amputate my brain."

"Of course."

"Right. Would you care to hear the details?"

"Here?" Flint says. "Three separate sets of police have walked past that door since I came in."

"Losing your nerve, pensioner?"

Flint gives a bland stare and waves at him to get on with things.

Silver lowers the head of his bed an inch or two at a time at about five minute intervals. Neither of them acknowledge that he's doing it, but Flint modifies his behavior accordingly, lowering his voice by degrees, deliberately trying to avoid saying something that would rile him up. Once Silver is fully horizontal, he kisses him goodbye and comes away with his face wet. "Hey," Flint says softly. " _Hey_."

Silver makes a terrible, sniffling attempt at a smile. "Leave it. It's just the fucking morphine."

As he turns to leave, he hears a ragged intake of breath. "James?"

Insinuating himself onto the bed without fucking up one or more of the tubes and wires is trickier than defusing some bombs, but the way Silver rests his head in Flint's lap and melts against him makes it worth the effort. 

"I wasn't scared," Silver says, "until they pushed you out of the room. I felt like I couldn't die as long as you were watching." He fidgets, pulling at Flint's trouser leg. "It's too much, I'm aware of that. I can't give you that much power."

"I don't know what to say to that."

Silver awkwardly moves his head from one side to the other. "That's not-"

"Except that I might feel the same way." The seed was planted when Silver fished him out of the Thames with Dufresne's fucking bullet in his shoulder and it took root so quietly he didn't recognize something growing until it was big enough to blot out the sun.

Silver's eyes flick up towards him and away again. "Yes," Flint says. "Even now. In this form, the last, the one in the future. I need _you_."

Flint takes the silence as permission to start rubbing Silver's head in earnest.

"We're both mad." Silver doesn't sound worried anymore, but there is the morphine to consider. As for Flint, he doesn't know any other way to be with someone. He gives his heart whole or none of it at all. "What time is it?"

"No fucking clue."

"The nurse should be coming to get my arse out of bed any moment." He wriggles contentedly, showing no sign of wanting to move. "We have almost certainly pissed my entire nap time away."

"Should I stop?"

Silver groans, closing his eyes. "Stop and I will give Dufresne your address. After I find his mother, tell her I'm you, and kick her in the face."

"You'll do what?" Flint says, and is immediately pinned by Silver's glare.

"I'm going to need you to mark your calendar," he says, in that smooth voice that tells a person he wants to share a tale by the fire before he kills them painfully. "The day they let me try out the prosthetic, you need to be there, so I can kick you first."

"Then Dufresne's mum?"

"She is no longer my primary target. I may not get to her at all. In the meantime..." He beckons with one finger, his tired eyes dancing. "Get down here so I can bite you, you absolute fuck."

**Author's Note:**

> gates is the only one not a criminal in this au because HE LIVES. i wanted to bring him in whilst eliminating any reason for anyone to kill him. also yes don't get me wrong miranda does deserve a heaping heck of a lot better than noted worst dad in the world r.guthrie. it's ok she gets thomas back, eventually. also also silver meets madi a year or so from now and instantly goes hearteyes forever. i don't trust myself to write something that requires plot, but jot that down.


End file.
